Consider negative aspects of private prison plan

Prisons are hard to run, but private prisons are even harder to run effectively. Because private prisons are responsible to their stockholders, they chronically understaff their facilities to reduce costs. I understand that the area needs jobs, but we should seek good jobs, not ones that have high turnover rates and salaries so low that their employees have little motivation to do a good job.

Private prisons have, in their 20-year history, generated more civil rights abuses per capita than government facilities. There are many examples of increased violence by guards and by inmates against inmates in private prisons. Private prisons are not subject to public scrutiny as government facilities are, because the federal Freedom of Information Act does not allow the public to obtain records from private prisons, even though its detainees may be held on behalf of the federal government. Therefore it is difficult for the public to know about those abuses, despite the fact that the liability for these abuses falls on the government and therefore on the taxpayer.

Therefore I think a private prison for immigration detainees is not only a bad idea in Upper Mount Bethel Township, but I also don't support the GEO Group Inc. constructing a private prison anywhere.